CLINTON FRETS OVER THAT GLEAM IN DEVELOPERS' EYES

By MICHAEL R. BENSON

Published: December 22, 1985

FOR years, the name Hell's Kitchen has conjured up images of seedy tenement buildings and violence by gangs of street fighters.

But the last five years have brought a different sort of battle to this West Side neighborhood, perhaps best symbolized by the giant pair of eyes looking down 50th Street from the ''Cats'' billboard on Broadway. To many residents, that appraising stare might also belong to the city's top developers.

Hell's Kitchen, which stretched from 40th to 59th Streets and from Eighth Avenue to the Hudson, is now called Clinton. The modern district reaches south to 34th Street.

Although 30 blocks are protected by what city planners say is Manhattan's most restrictive special zoning district - 42d Street to 57th Street and Eighth Avenue to 12th Avenue - the protected area is now surrounded by sites where huge projects are planned in the not-too-distant future. As a result, many low- and middle-income residents worry fear future displacement for development.

Two developers recently disclosed major plans for the West Side. On Nov. 18, Donald Trump announced a proposal for a 77-acre ''Television City'' on the Hudson River just north of Clinton, including the world's tallest building. A week later, a team of developers led by William Zeckendorf Jr. unveiled a model for a $500 million twin-tower complex on the old Madison Square Garden site - the block bounded by Eighth and Ninth Avenues and 49th and 50th Streets.

Not all Clinton residents oppose development.''People who moved here in co-ops can only have an interest in upgrading the neighborhood,'' said Barbara Ungeheuer, who with her husband, Freidel, bought a co-op on West 55th Street in 1980. ''But the community board has opposed everything. We thought the area would change more quickly because it was so fabulously located.''

Though still an ethnically diverse working-class neighborhood, with a notable strip of ethnic food markets along Ninth Avenue, Clinton has increasingly attracted younger, more affluent people drawn by the fact that they can walk to their offices and are in the heart of the theater district.

The area has been particularly sensitive to development pressures since 1974, when the city's Department of Planning created the Clinton Special Preservation District in response to local fears that rampant development spurred by the new Convention Center - originally planned for the West 50's -would force out lower-income residents.

The zoning rules for the district were designed to preserve the neighborhood's residential character, maintain a mixture of income groups and restrict demolition of buildings suitable for renovation.

Although the Convention Center site was moved south of 39th Street, community leaders say that zoning protection in Clinton is more vital now than ever.

''Economic development, if left unchecked, will consume Clinton,'' said Ruth Kahn, head of Community Board 4. ''I hate to say this, but the way the city's handling it is just a holding action until developers move in.''

City authorities deny this. Con Howe, who oversees the Clinton Preservation District as the head of the Manhattan Office of the Department of City Planning, said that the special zoning was originally approved so that development could take place around it. ''And that has happened,'' he said. ''But certainly the basic provisions of the Preservation District I don't see changing.''

One city plan that has stirred controversy is a proposal to sell two sites in the special district to developers - one to Glick Associates and the other to Bernard Brodsky/Norman Siegal Joint Venture. The sites are inside a seven-block Urban Renewal Area, zoned for low- and moderate-income residents and permitting high-rise buildings.

Under the city's plan, the developers would construct two apartment buildings with a total of 658 units on the northwest and southwest corners of West 52d Street and 10th Avenue. Both developers are seeking permission to rent 80 percent of their units at market rates, saving only the remaining 20 percent for low-income tenants.

Community groups say the plan will displace people, 13 businesses and three local art groups. A consortium of local businesses has come up with an alternative they say will achieve renewal without displacement.

But the city, which asked for proposals for the sites late in 1982, is unlikely to change course now, said Mr. Howe. He said that the plan had been ''broadly discussed and reviewed for a while'' and that some community suggestions had been adopted.

One thing that nobody disputes is that developers have arrived in full force.

Apart from Mr. Trump's giant project to the north, some of Manhattan's largest and most ambitious projects are to rise on the fringes of the area. Columbus Circle, to the northeast, is to sprout an angular, twin-towered structure on Mortimer Zuckerman's $456.1 million Coliseum site. The 13-acre, $2 billion Times Square Redevelopment Project is planned at the special district's southern boundary. And on the Hudson in the 30's, the glass-sheathed Jacob K. Javits Convention Center is due to open next April. THE Zeckendorf team plans to build two towers - one an office building rising 45 stories, the other a 38-story apartment house - on the old Madison Square Garden site. Mr. Zeckendorf also is clearing a site he owns on the west side of Eighth Avenue between 57th and 58th Street, but he has not yet announced plans for the project.